Hey u guys been listening to ur podcast for about a month. I was told about your podcast from tad at kis organics podcast.
I have four harvests under my belt. I’ve got my room set up finally where I feel my buds are coming out almost to my expectations. I’m not getting those huge colas with massive buds. While looking up ways to make buds bigger I ran onto a technique I had never seen before. It’s called back building or bud pinching. It’s where u cut or pinch the very top of buds. To stimulate further vertical growth of buds. I’ve done it on a couple plants with mixed results. I was wanting to know what u guys think about this technique and get any tips for future. Btw I understand that genetics is the best factor in achieving the huge buds.
A tried and true technique that I have used to pretty good success is to remove all but the top 4 or 5 bud sites per branch. I am using scrog screens in the flower room, so basically, everything under the screen is removed and everything above the screen stays. This directs all the plant energy to the upper most buds (that are exposed to the most light) and will build larger buds than if you left all the bud sites on the plant.
Just a note, big buds in this system doesn’t always translate to bigger yield. You are harvesting less total bud sites so they have to get much bigger to out yield a plant with smaller buds but with many bud sites. Like most things in the growing game, it is strain specific so what I have to do, is grow a plant using this tech and a clone of the same plant without using the tech and compare the yields to see which is better.
I have never heard of the pinching tech you are talking about but I would hesitate to even try it, because I don’t even like to touch my buds until harvest time. I have noticed that people like to go into a flower room and squeeze a bud and it drives me crazy! Just watch a bud after it has been squeezed, almost every time, the white hairs will turn brown by the next day almost like a bruise. Maybe it’s nothing, but it still drives me crazy, lol.
Back building I believe is to just make the bud stop growing vertically, to promote a “chunkier” more uniform looking bud. Don’t think it will increase in weight any, just look a little fatter.
I use the bud pinching technique on all my grows and have gotten massive buds. You want to start around week 2 flower and only do one cola at a time every 2-3 days. Get every bud site on that main stem. It’s risky to bud pinch too much at one time because that stress will make them herm out. You could leave a cola without pinching to compare at the end of harvest and with my results the bud pinching definitely produced better yields then without.